Breakdown of Rauha tehtiin neljäntenätoista huhtikuuta.
tehdä
to do
huhtikuu
April
rauha
peace
neljästoista
fourteenth
Questions & Answers about Rauha tehtiin neljäntenätoista huhtikuuta.
How do we get the form neljäntenätoista for "on the fourteenth"?
To say that something happens "on" a certain date, Finnish uses the essive case, which adds the ending -na or -nä. The word for "14th" is neljästoista. For numbers from 11 to 19, only the first part changes its case. The first part, neljäs (fourth), becomes neljäntenä in the essive. The second part, toista, stays exactly as it is. Put them together and you get neljäntenätoista.
Why does April appear as huhtikuuta instead of its basic form huhtikuu?
When giving a date, the month is always put into the partitive case. You can think of it as saying "on the fourteenth part of April". Since huhtikuu ends in two vowels, its partitive ending is -ta, making it huhtikuuta.
What form of the verb is tehtiin?
It is the past passive form of the verb tehdä (to do / to make). The passive voice is used when an action is done by human agents, but we do not specify exactly who did it. It translates perfectly to the English passive "was made".
If rauha (peace) is the thing that was made, why doesn't it have an object ending like -n or -a?
In Finnish passive sentences, the object is usually in its basic, uninflected form (the nominative case). Since the passive verb tehtiin doesn't have a specific person acting as the subject, the object rauha takes the nominative form instead of a normal object case.
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